Independence Drive

He was set in the trunk of his CR-V holding out a hand for his dog and waiting for us to come along. He sat there and watched us roll into the driveway just stayin put on the edge of his Honda. That dog did all his movin for him, and by God it did a good bit of its own. No sooner did Mom open up her door that it hopped in that car and set each paw along, walking over anything it saw until we found our chance to step out.

Earl’s not a big man but he likes to think he is, and frankly, so do I. Bag in hand, I marched over to him and he held out a hand for me to shake, but once I got close enough I leaned in for a hug, which he took, but I still can’t help but feel it wasn’t right for me to do.

Something about a man living 86 years and askin for a handshake from his own grandson and not gettin it made me think just how many times he had left to give one.

Movin inside Grandma had her kitchen goin like she wasn’t only three years ahead of her husband, and part of her had no choice but to keep on the way she always had because God knows he can’t do it for himself.

I said hello to her and hugging her felt like the right thing to do and I can’t much think of a time when it hadn’t. Anytime I’ve ever seen her was in a polo shirt or a sweater and so holding that lady feels distinct in a lasting kind of way.

She felt light. Light enough that I thought just for the shortest moment on what might happen if I moved in a sudden way or leaned my weight against her own that she might fall or hurt. So I was careful, and stepping away thought of how fragile she was, the body she was in. The body she had left. Whatever remained in the marrow of her bones and the heart in her chest. There was likely not much of it, but you would never know from looking.

That night we ate jaloopies. There is nothing special about em. They’re chili with doritos, and nothing else.

I believe that everybody has a meal that doesn’t quite taste like itself, but rather like all the other times it came with. For me that is a meal of three houses and 18 years, and when I have it next, I know it’ll taste the same. I won’t make it, though. I plan to make a good many meals as I go along but that will not be one of em. What’s special is who makes it for you.

Just after eating, I stepped downstairs to the basement and saw the waterlines stained up the sides of the concrete walls from last year’s flood. Uncle Pete came in to help best he could just like always and a whole service had to be called in and thankfully they managed to save just about all the pictures. My mother and all her brothers, along with her one sister, all have their spots spread somewhere out on that wall, and there’s something just a little odd about lookin at em.

Especially my mother’s.

It’s difficult in a natural kind of way to separate that kind of person from yourself, so lookin at em back before they even knew your name feels wrong and a little intrusive.

In the back corner sat a pair of twin beds trundled one above the other and eight summers ago I slept on the one lower. I woke up halfway through the night and saw my youngest brother rolling back over the side of the bed and felt vomit on my face and forehead. When I went upstairs and let my mother know, she was missing her contacts and only seconds removed from sleep and asked me what the hell I was doing. After I showered she and my dad took both little ones and drove twelve hours through the night back to Nashville and left me and my older brother there for an extra couple weekends.

That night after everyone made their way up to bed I stayed awake writing for a school paper and did so sitting in grandpa’s remote-controlled recliner given him on account of his crumbling back. I was writing about Ecclesiastes, and that’s a book I very much enjoy. I took a quote from that book, and it told me “Do not say ‘why were the former days better than these?’” Now I wouldn’t say I’ve gotten to the point of askin such a thing, or frankly havin many of what might be considered “former days,” but sitting there by the same brick fireplace my mother used to climb along in the days when her mother still had legs beneath her to run up and find her fallen on the hardwood below, I felt that in this house I might be alone in my thinking.

*****

When I’d written enough to feel that I was done I walked upstairs to the room I’d be stayin in. This room at one time belonged to my Uncle Mike and my Uncle Pete and on the wall facing the foot of the beds hung a corkboard tacked with all kinds of photos from all different times along with a cutout of the sports section from when Pete made the paper. Underneath that board sat a short white shelf and in it I found a viewfinder and three little yellow boxes of Ektachrome slides. I sifted through and looked at every one of those slides, tilting my head up to the lights on the fan and on the other end seeing little bits of a life somehow a part of my own sit still for me to watch.

The slides held each photo in a tight red film, and I watched each one like a boy sliding coins in a Nickelodeon to look at how the strongman moves. The photos started in Japan on the deck of a destroyer and trailed through the streets of Okinawa and up past the snowy mountains. They saw a young lieutenant in a barber’s chair on the outskirts of a jungle and followed him back to the barracks where he stood posing in a black kimono.

I knew he was the same man. And even saw him there. By God I heard that old Marine call Reveille in the mornings and sit out on the porch singing to the sound of the corps band on the fourth. But seeing him set down on a rock on the side of his platoon sergeant in the belly of God knows what beast I couldn’t help but feel that he was no man I knew. Surely he saw himself as that same old platoon leader launching mortars in the morning and holding dancers in the night, but for me that man is a red man. A man I only know from what I’ve heard of him and what I’ve seen peering past an old lens with an eye he would not recognize.

Next morning I came downstairs to a plate of pancakes waitin long after the others were done eatin. In my hand I had the old slides and the viewfinder and I showed Grandpa what I saw. From the one box I pulled out a couple photos of him and his old cars. A ‘59 Plymouth and an old Chevelle. He told me that he bought that Plymouth for $200 dollars and Grandma said he only paid for half of it. Eventually he got around to lookin at some of them slides from his days back on Okinawa and at those ones he looked real hard.

*****

He talked a little about Japan but a lot about its women. Grandma didn’t like hearing about his girlfriends but I hardly think even half of em aren’t of his own invention.

 “I never heard a baby cry in the far east,” he told me. To him that was worth mentioning.

Grandma and Mom left to go to lunch and I stayed back with Grandpa to watch the Eagles play Pittsburgh. “This game only happens once every four years” he said, and his team was due for a loss. We watched that game sittin in the kitchen on their tv just about the size of a laptop. The man can’t see to a trip past sundown but he sure loves football enough to try. He played a while back, still has Paterno’s letter. Durin the game he made sure to point out every State boy and let me know if they were one to watch, which to him they always were. It was about noon so I made myself a sandwich and offered makin him one but he made sure I knew not to, and so I sat there eating mine while he spooned up soup that his wife left on the stove simmering just before she went away.

The kids always say in a joking kind of way that they hope he goes first, because God help the soul who keeps that man alive who doesn’t drop dead trying. But I reckon he’d do just fine. He can turn on the tv and he can walk up the stairs and he can shave his face. So it’s really just the hunger that’d get him.

*****

I went upstairs to use the bathroom and on the back of the pink toilet seat I saw blood dried up in a long spread-out sort of shape. I sat there lookin for a moment like I might come up with how it got there but I mostly just worried why it had. I don’t remember what I did with it. I either left it or I spat on it and wiped it down with a wad of toilet paper but as much as I remember my disturbance at seeing that spot of red too many shades separate from the surface on which it sat I can not for the life of me remember what I did about it.

A little later Mom and Grandma came back and they met me upstairs. Grandma wanted Mom to see the jewelry box she had in the hallway closet so she’d know where to find it when she died. Mom said I’d have to remember for her—I’m writin it here so I don’t forget. I followed Mom into her room and saw her old desktop and telephone and up above on some shelves sat little cabbage patch dolls and porcelain ones on little chairs with eyes painted like nothing you wanna look at. Just after walkin out Grandpa came out of his room lettin hang his bare belly and asking for shaving cream like we knew where he last had it.

*****

Mom and Grandma left to pick up sandwiches for dinner and Grandpa made sure they brought back a meatball sub for his dog. While they were out we watched the Sunday night game and I had to fight to stay awake until the women came back with the meal. I asked him about the gun he keeps in the garage.

“That old English rifle?” he asked.

“Yeah that’s the one.”

“That rifle has a bad barrel,” he told me, “it shoots way off to the side.”

“There’s a rifle up in that room you’re in,” he added.

“Really?”

 “Oh yeah, I won it in a raffle.”

He met me up in that room and showed me the case beneath the other bed. I pulled it out and popped open the clamps and there it was. It was not a rifle, mind you, but a duck gun. A brand new Weatherby with a varnished oak stock and steel receiver, two geese engraved on the metal mid flight. I couldn’t help but think I was the only other man to hold that weapon since he had, or maybe I was even the first. There was not a single print, mark, or scratch on that gun from stock to sight. I held it there and when he went back down I tried to hold it with just one arm. It was heavy and I had to set it down. When I did I saw a little white envelope just set there in the case and I wondered why I’d let it be. I slid it out from under the gun and opening it found inside a thin little rod about one inch long and made of aluminum. Right there was the only thing about that gun that made it worth a damn and I stood there holding it in my hand. You may as well pray for a duck fallin out of the sky if your gun hasn’t got a pin in it. You’d almost certainly have more luck that way.

That night we ate cheesesteaks and meatball subs and the dog had a little bit of it all. After dinner Grandpa took a nap and Mom and I watched the Lakers win the finals. It all happened on that little TV in that little kitchen. There was no one in the crowd and I wondered how many people might be watching but I mostly just thought of how still and quiet that little house was when it got past eight o’ clock.

I stayed downstairs writing for school but eventually went up and there continued. When I was done I got myself ready to sleep and on the edge of the bed sat lookin at the bottom of the one across. Gettin up slow I walked on over and pulled out that case settin it right on top of the bed.

I liked lookin at the gun. He said that he won it in a raffle and I doubt he had any other story for it but that one. Must’ve been one of those things you get a hold of but can’t quite get any use out of. Besides, that man is in no condition to shoot a twelve gauge.

Last time I ever saw him hold one was back when I had hair past my shoulders and my brother flung the clay discs out over the fields. Just one of em, though, got caught on the sling and when he whipped the launcher in his hand the pigeon stuck on a second too long and flew fast it could into Grandpa’s eye. He didn’t get stitches but that doesn’t mean he didn’t need em and when I next saw my brother he was in that kind of way where you can’t look a man in the eyes.

*****

Earlier that day when Grandpa was asleep I went out on the back porch and found my mother talking to hers about the man they both knew best.

“He doesn’t wanna go back to the VA,” said Grandma, “‘cause when he does they’ll take his license. He can’t drive at night because it gets too dark, and in the day the glare’s too much for him. He just can’t see. At least if we go you’ll know who was driving.”

“And you know how his back is, I mean he wakes me up every other night and when he doesn’t he gets up the next day and mows the damn lawn for an hour and can’t hardly take a seat when he’s done.”

The three of us sat there for a time but it felt more like two and a watcher. This was not my conversation to have and all I could do was sit there and hear them speak. That back porch patio held in it a heavy kind of solemnity and I expected more emotion from my mother. She is notorious for crying at the slightest call but here she sat unfazed. She knew her mother and they had likely had this conversation before. It was now just a matter of when they might have it last. Both women held onto that notion strongly and faced it unafraid.

He didn’t wake for a while.

*****

Grandma likes to say that when he goes he’ll go in his yard or in his car and to her that’s good enough, she says that he’ll be happy when he goes and I guess that’s true but there’s really no way to know.

I just hope she doesn’t hurt herself trying to help.

I would hope he’s not been driving, though, but in a way I feel it ain’t my call to make. That man is an old man, and what he wants to do is pretty much his choice. At a certain point the man really only has so much left, and what he does he seems to like a good bit. I don’t know what he’ll do when they tell him he can’t keep on, but I guess it’s up to him.

The next morning was the last and so I showed him the video I took of myself taking the oath of the Armed Forces the day before I came. I went to hand him the phone and he reached off to the left and I had to put it in his hands for him. He turned it up high as it went and watched it lookin down through his readers. He saw me with my right hand up and heard me say the words and watched it once more when he finished. After that he smiled and with a little chuckle let me know.

“I took the same oath. Same oath, man.”

He handed back the phone and flipped up his placemat, pickin up a strand of floss he kept underneath and sat there pickin his teeth with the paper in his lap.

*****

Mom and I had to see about leaving and so we made our way around the house and hoped we hadn’t left anything worth keeping. Of course Mom forgot the Louis scarf Grandma gave her knowing that she would wear it twice as often as she ever would, but besides that we had all our things about us. While Mom finished up packing I went around the house one last time.

In the corner of the living room sat a grandfather clock that made a report on every new hour. However many times a day it did I heard that clock sound off in the middle of a lunch or a bickering between old lovers but it was loudest in the night. Those times I heard it before I went to sleep or through my headphones writing up late at night it had to it a ghostly sound like it would and already had outlived me.

Before we left, I handed Grandma a book I brought by McCarthy. There’s a line in there I quite like. Something about a man’s father carrying fire in a horn like they did in older times. I knew that it’d be too violent for her and she even politely let my mother know so much a week later but she was kind enough to read it through. I went up to grab my things and took a long last look in that room before heading back down to hug them both goodbye.

My mother drove this time and rolling out of the driveway the morning was a deep blue dark and the lights along the road were few. We made once around the cul-de-sac and goin on past I could still make out through the fog of the window an old man standing in the light of his garage. It was terminally dark that morning and I hardly think he saw me wave.